The Secret Generations (26 page)

Porter arrived with the coffee, asking if they required brandy, or anything else. Sara said that it was all right; they would help themselves. Porter looked disapproving, but, with grumbles under his breath
‘In The General’s day…’ accepted Sara’s advice that he should go to bed. ‘I’ll make sure everything’s locked up,’ she told him, with a smile, in the manner of one of the housemaids. Porter would never adapt to taking orders from her, so she played a game of her own with him.

‘
Oh dear, poor old Porter, he just will not give up.’ Richard seemed not to have heard her. ‘Dick?’

‘
Who? Oh, sorry, Sara, I was daydreaming.’

She poured the coffee, her hand trembling slightly. In the back of her mind there was a picture of leaves in autumn being blown over the surface of the lily pond behind the Great Lawn. Then she asked about his daydream.

‘Oh, that? It’s a recurring dream – awake or asleep, my dear.’ Though he sat across from her, his hand moved, as though he could reach out and touch her. ‘Sara, you must know that I dream about you day and night.’

The picture of the lily pond changed in her head, a vivid recollection of the night they had almost made love taking its place. That was her own recurring dream.

‘If I was able, I’d ask you to marry me now – I mean as soon as you’re out of mourning. After a decent…’

The mist of silence stretched between them, and the pictures in her brain altered, shuffled clearly: Richard Farthing and herself in this very room, before and after John
’s death; times together with words not spoken; the Downs and watching him teach James to fly; his aeroplane wheeling over the house at dawn; the muddle of emotions this tall American seemed to leave behind him.

She asked what he meant by
‘if he was able’?

He took a deep breath.
‘I came to see you… to say goodbye.’

Sara had not expected her reaction to be so violent. He spoke almost harshly and, for a second, it took her breath away.

As though he detected the shock, Dick hurriedly added, ‘Oh, not for good and all. I was on the point of joining the Royal Flying Corps. They’d accepted me. Then I had an urgent cable. My father and my uncle – the Senator – both want me home fast. They seem to think there’s a special job I can do. A duty for your country, is how the old man put it. As I see it, my duty’s to the survival of mankind. If I have my way you’ll see me back here again in a matter of months, if not weeks. Sara, you know I’ve loved you almost from the first moment. I know there was a time when you felt the same, because…’

‘
Because we very nearly did something exceptionally foolish…’

‘
Yes.’

‘
My dear, dear Richard. Of course I care for you. But… Oh, after what happened that night… Well, I suppose it was a kind of guilt. I felt…’

‘
That you had to support John. That you loved him more…’

She put her cup down slowly, rose, and came towards him, stopping his mouth with her hand.
‘Yes, I suppose that’s partly true. But not wholly. You’ve never been far from my thoughts since that night.’ Her brow creased. ‘I’m not running away from decisions and things, Dick, but I ask you not to talk about it now – not yet. It’s difficult, I know. But, please, remember one thing. If I ever marry again, then I hope it will be you.’

He made as if to speak, but Sara overrode him, raising her voice slightly.
‘Dick, you have to go away. You tell me that you’ll be back. While you’re away I’ll be thinking about you – about us,’ she wondered at her own control, for half of her mind thought of the bed upstairs and Richard’s body; the church in Haversage, with orange blossom and the tall, handsome man standing beside her as she promised to love, honour and obey him. ‘Please, Dick, don’t ask me to commit myself now, at this moment. When you come back – if we both feel the same when a little more time has gone by – then we’ll talk. But not just yet.’

Dick Farthing remained silent for some time. He did not look at her when he spoke.
‘If that’s what you want, Sara, so be it. We won’t speak of it until I return. But I will not change.’ His face turned towards her, suddenly, the old, confident dazzling smile enveloping her. ‘Believe me, when I get back, I’m going to ask you to marry me,’ the grin broadened, ‘unless you’ve found somebody else.’

She kissed his cheek, whispering,
‘Thank you. You know that I’m not going to find anyone else.’

Slowly, after another long, tender kiss, she disentangled herself, and he stood up, crossing to the table, asking if he could help them to brandy.

When the glasses were filled, he raised his. ‘To my return?’ looking full into her eyes over the rim. She nodded, feeling more content than she had done for weeks.

Presently, keeping to the bargain and not talking about their personal futures, he asked after James.
‘I haven’t had a word from him…’

‘
Margaret Mary says he’s away most of the time – here, there and everywhere. She knows he was in Antwerp during the siege, and she gave me the impression that he’s off on special duties for most of the time. He’s like you – turns up, like a will o’ the wisp, out of nowhere, sleeps for forty-eight hours, then spends a day cosseting his loved ones before disappearing again. She says he’s changed.’

‘
The war’s going to change a lot of people. The papers don’t tell us much, but things are not going well for the French, so heaven knows what’s happening to the British Expeditionary Force.’

Sara told him that the family appeared to be more worried about Caspar than anyone else.
‘He’s out there somewhere, with his regiment. Belgium, I think.’

He nodded,
‘And what of the twins? Is it Rupert? And…?’

‘
Ramillies…’

‘
Yep, Ramillies. There are so many Railtons, and I guess I’m not overly good with names.’

‘
Rupert’s safe enough. In
Monmouth
. The ship’s an old bucket, but she’s an armoured cruiser, and Rupert’s with eleven of his old friends from Dartmouth. Andrew says he’s safe and well out of it all, off South America.’

‘
And Ramillies, what’s he up to?’

She gave a humourless snort.
‘By my reckoning Ramillies is the darkest of horses, and the most brilliant. Got a flair for languages, like his cousin James. He’s also far away from any danger – trailing in the wake of the enigmatic Giles. Ramillies is acting as his aide, and, I should imagine, it will be Ramillies who’ll eventually be the
Eminence grise
of Whitehall.’

Dick pursed his lips,
‘Never really figured out what Giles Railton does at the Foreign Office.’

‘
You’re not alone in that, dear Richard. Soon after we were married, I asked John what Giles did. You’d probably be surprised, but John could be quite poetic at times. He said, “My uncle lives on the far side of the moon, and comes down to earth in the most unlikely places, and in a hundred disguises.” Then he quoted what he said was a Russian proverb – “The moon shines, but it does not warm.”’ She laughed, without humour. ‘If I were a true Railton, I certainly wouldn’t have told you that. Uncle Giles is a secret moon man, and plies a hidden trade. Enough!’

He shrugged, as though to imply that it was not enough, and Sara half smiled.
‘I’ll add one thing. I wouldn’t trust Giles Railton an inch. Not with anything – family property, family ties, country, secrets… even life.’

Dick, catching her mood, quickly changed the subject.
‘And Andrew? He was hoping to go back to sea: his own ship.’

‘
No such luck. Chained to the Admiralty. He’s happy enough, though. So’s Charles for that matter, even if he never speaks about the job he’s doing. They’re a very secretive lot, my Railtons.’

‘
Yes,
my Railtons
,’ he echoed. ‘You’re very much one of them now. If I do get to marry you, I’ve no illusions as to which family I’d be joining.’

By mentioning marriage again, Dick had crossed into
mutually agreed forbidden ground, and a silence shouldered itself between them. For a while, they sat separated by their own thoughts.

Presently, it was Sara who suggested they should take a turn outside. She led the way to her own favourite place, the rose garden.

‘You can bear to come here now?’ He remembered that terrible day, such a short time ago, when John lay near these very bushes, gasping his sudden last breath.

‘
I come here a great deal. There’s peace here.’

The moon was high, and the roses almost all gone now, leaving only the scent of other flowers: night stocks and a hint of rosemary mingled with the clear, clean smell of country greenery. He did not have to look at Sara to know she was smiling.

‘John’s peace?’ he asked.

‘
I like to think he found peace here. Does that sound sentimental?’

‘
It might from any other woman.’ He turned, his arms enfolding her.

Sara, in spite of her good i
ntentions, found herself returning the embrace. Her eyes stayed open, staring ahead into the darkness, aware of the stars pulsing through the universe, and the great shadow that was Redhill, looming in the moonlight.

Dick saw it as well, and shivered, involuntarily, as he recalled what Sara had said of Giles Railton. Other words came to him
– Shakespeare, out of context, yet seemingly right:
Let us be Diana’s foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon
.

The kiss was not passionate, by their own choice, though it lasted long. Sara, with her own brand of romanticism, allowed herself to imagine it as some physical, shared, prayer:
Oh God, let the peace of this place be echoed through the world. Let the peace come, and let the slaughter of battle not take place
.

Deep inside, she knew the impossibility of what she asked.

*

‘
If the damned military would only listen.’ Giles sat, weary, in front of C’s littered desk. ‘We warned them of the build-up, that it was going to be a copybook offensive: the Schlieffen Plan with a few modifications by Moltke.’

Smith-Cumming grunted,
‘Not your fault. If anyone’s to blame it’s the French, and then our own senior military people. You do not meet an offensive battle plan as they, and the French, have done.’

Giles was past listening.
‘We told them, well in advance. We even managed to warn the idiots about the size of the German army that would be passing through Belgium. But no! They’ll only believe it when the forward units are wiped out. How in God’s name do we make them understand?’

The head of the Secret Service gave a grimace.
‘We do our best to go on providing good intelligence. In the end, perhaps these antiquarian strategists of the General Staff may see reason. Our kind of work is only as good as the use military commanders make of it. What we have to do…’ A knock at the door put an end to what could have been a lecture on the military value of intelligence.

It was a messenger with the
latest dispatches from the headquarters of Sir John French – Commander-in-Chief BEF –which, when read, only brought more concern.

As Smith-Cumming scanned the flimsy pages, and then passed them to Giles, both men grew more sombre
– though Giles Railton quickly allowed his near despair to burst into the thunder of fury. ‘After all we’ve provided for them, they still fall into the snare! God knows how many lads’ll go to their graves because of this folly!’

Giles had a right to be bitter and angry. He had spent hours going through the fine detail of all he knew of the Schlieffen War Plan. The Committee of Imperial Defence could not have been better or more thoroughly briefed. Giles
’ plea was that the whole General Staff should know everything and share it with their French counterparts long before the crisis had got out of hand.

And now the trap was sprun
g, just as the dead von Schlieffen had planned, and his successor Moltke had reshaped.

The main German thrust moved with great strength, curving through Belgium, cutting a great swath, like some giant scythe, towards France. The German strategists had banked on the French counter-attacking heavily in the north-east. This was the core of von Schlieffen
’s plan – for it was how the French could be caught, pincered and crushed; while the forces moving through Belgium would envelop and rape Paris itself.

But the closed minds of the Allied military commanders of the
‘Entente Powers’ appeared oblivious to the warning.

‘
Even when we had aerial evidence of the size of the advance into Belgium, they would not accept it.’ Giles spoke almost to himself. He had experienced battle, and knew the horror that was now taking place only a few miles across the Channel.

Smith-Cumming found the ability to grunt out a laugh, even at this grim moment.
‘They wouldn’t even accept my agents’ information of five hundred and fifty troop trains crossing the Rhine bridges each day. Well, they know now.’